Comments on: No Matter How NBC Spins It, Olympics Web Strategy Comes Up A Loser

By: Arnet

Arnet — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:31:49 +0000

greetings, I didn’t know where to contact you but your web design layout was off on IE and firefox. Anyways, did you see this weeks episode?

By: Is Adobe even trying? | johnwilker.com

Is Adobe even trying? | johnwilker.com — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:13:32 +0000

[...] techCrunch: NBCOlympics.com may have streamed 72 million videos and racked up 1.2 billion pageviews, but Yahoo [...]

By: don’t explain » Blog Archive » NBC Olympics web strategy: a loser?

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 09:20:41 +0000

[...] TechCrunch reported a couple of days ago that the NBC Olympics web initiative was an abysmal failure. A “loser”. [...]

By: CANNIBALIZING YOUR AUDIENCE, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA : Jeju Life Blog

CANNIBALIZING YOUR AUDIENCE, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA : Jeju Life Blog — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:59:15 +0000

[...] The Olympics are over and no matter how NBC spins it, its Olympic web strategy comes up a loser. [...]

By: Mom of 19

Mom of 19 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:31:29 +0000

(1) There is absolutely NO reason any event should be w/o commentation. There are plenty of retired athletes out there who would love to speak for their sport at a reasonable price – shame on NBC for not using a great source there.

(2) I too arrived at the SL download screen and immediately exited.

(3) Sad to say a great soccer opportunity missed. Is there any reason why there was NO soccer – not even a highlight? I thought maybe it was because of the length of the game but I spent the entire evening watching a marathon though – of BOTH genders! Give me a break.

(4) People rant about NBC only covering events USA had a good showing for…using women’s soccer to make my point that we didn’t see only events USA had good showing in…is back to back gold not a good enough reason to broadcast a 90 minute soccer game? Obviously not since we didn’t even see highlights.

(5) With the availability of specific channels out there – baseball, football, soccer, etc – why didn’t NBC seek to make even more $ and let dedicated stations broadcast their specific sport? It would have been great for sports they had no intention of broadcasting anyway (like soccer or softball). Oh, I forgot, it was all about control!

2008 NBC Olympic coverage – another example of how big business is keeping our freedom from ringing!

By: Tom Sol

Tom Sol — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:05:38 +0000

YouTube had a lot of highlights…granted they were taking down but they used Flash at the end of the day and won in streams.

http://www.divi...etrics-summary/

By: Tom Sol

Tom Sol — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:57:13 +0000

The divinity Metrics numbers are neat. Nice silicon valley startup find btw…but yea, from what you see at dm, NBC did really really bad.

By: vitor

vitor — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:51:54 +0000

NBC was forced to limit the coverage to US. If they wanted to open it up, they’d would have to pay IOC more.

By: Marko

Marko — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:23:19 +0000

NBC does not even come close to the number of “other” video streams online. http://tinyurl.com/65zhn9

By: Trace

Trace — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:49:11 +0000

exactly. SL is a superior product. period.

By: The Inquirer ES : Las olimpiadas de la NBC, un fracaso

The Inquirer ES : Las olimpiadas de la NBC, un fracaso — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:43:28 +0000

[...] TechCrunch // [...]

By: The Universal Desktop mobile edition

The Universal Desktop mobile edition — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:33:43 +0000

[...] from the BBC iPlayer or the mobile platforms. It’s all Flash in the browser. Compare that to 72 million videos in the states, and it shows that in a country much smaller than the US, online the Olympics was a [...]

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:46:22 +0000

I wanted to watch events, but I didn’t want to bother installing Silverlight. I ended up just reading about the Olympics this year.

By: CANNIBALIZING YOUR AUDIENCE, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA « The Jeju Life Blog

CANNIBALIZING YOUR AUDIENCE, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA « The Jeju Life Blog — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:55:15 +0000

[...] CANNIBALIZING YOUR AUDIENCE, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA The Olympics are over and no matter how NBC spins it, its Olympic web strategy comes up a loser. [...]

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:36:17 +0000

well, frankly, it is a better product than flash.

By: Geek Links - 08.26.08 : Wesley Donehue

Geek Links - 08.26.08 : Wesley Donehue — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:30:49 +0000

[...] TC | No Matter How NBC Spins It, Olympics Web Strategy Comes Up A Loser [...]

By: Geek Links - 08.26.08 : Wesley Donehue

Geek Links - 08.26.08 : Wesley Donehue — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:30:48 +0000

[...] TC | No Matter How NBC Spins It, Olympics Web Strategy Comes Up A Loser [...]

By: Sarnil

Sarnil — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:18:56 +0000

100% correct Shaun. Although I am not in the US haven’t had the same experience as vast number of commentators here, I still feel the spirit of sports was lost in all this. If having access to the coverage of Olympics is made extremely difficult or unaffordable, it really has big impact on how people perceive the event. Although our local TV covered all the events in a delayed telecast, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness in this day and age of technological advancement. For the first time, I couldn’t care less about Olympics simply because access to the coverage was so bad. Even World Cup Soccer or Rugby get’s much better coverage.

By: Olay

Olay — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:26:57 +0000

I’m an American abroad in Spain and I’ll give you the perspective from Spain/Europe.

In Spain, they only show matches with Spain, virtually all men’s basketball matches and some men’s soccer matches online and on TV. Then, I also found out much later on about the online coverage on Eurovision Network (an international television distribution network that serves Europe). This network had its own channels as well as channels by the Olympic TV provider of nearly each country within the network. As a result, I was able to watch some matches such as Belgium v. Nigeria in soccer that they did not show in Spain but was on Belgian TV.

My only gripe about the Spanish and Eurovision TV coverage was that it was not easy to navigate content, because I had to guess-and-check on each channel and hope to get lucky. If I had been in the US, the availability of content would have irked me because I never watch any events or matches that I already know the result to. It takes away the excitement and unpredictability. I don’t care if I have to install a plug-in or watch it unedited and without commentary, just give me the video. I have watched matches in German, Portuguese, Spanish, Flemish (i think), French, etc. Besides, most commentary is overrated, stupid and full of needless emotional stories (especially in U.S.).

By: Wik Ipedia

Wik Ipedia — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:37:07 +0000

Being standards compliant AND inventing own technologies is a bit hard, don’t you think?

Riffic, W, EH, Henry Miller, Rick Curran: you’re so dogmatic that I guess you must have been members of the Chinese Communist Party in the 60s… (in this or a previous life)

By: fernando

fernando — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:39:41 +0000

A lot of events were available online, but only hours, hours after the event occurred. I guess they were keeping it on hold until the TV broadcast occurred.

By: fernando

fernando — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:37:55 +0000

I agree with @altrenda. This was an opportunity to make money from die-hard fans that would have paid a premium to have content available to them 24/7. I wanted so much to follow the soccer matches, but only watched one match. That’s because I could not figure out when those games would be available. Now I’m learning that NBC set up a FREE HD feed to most cable and satellite providers. How about a a premium online feed? I’d paid money for that option.

What a mistake.

By: fernando

fernando — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:33:30 +0000

Silverlight, Flash, Quicktime Seemic. . .It did not matter. The availablity of live content was disappointing. Additionally, how to track down results and/or video of specific events was poor. I look at this as a first attempt and hope that NBC and other primary broadcasters of an event on this scale will take away many lessons.

For the first time since the 1980 games have I viewed so little of the coverage of the olympic games, in part because I just could not figure out the scheduling grid online. I relied on this tool to set up my DVR and plan my viewing.

By: altrenda

altrenda — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:15:21 +0000

Right or wrong, the feeling at NBC and other broadcasters is “Don’t exchange analog dollars for digital cents” .

Advertisers lined up to pay at least $350K per minute for ads, no way could they get that kind of revenue on line.

“I would have gladly paid $20, maybe $30 or $40 to access all or most of the live events via nbcolympics.com. As a matter of fact, I would prefer to pay a flat fee and have no ads interrupt my viewing experience.” my guess is you’d be one of the very few.

And what’s the difference between Silverlight and Flash, except Silverlight has more features. Flash isn’t exactly open source. If you want to see the coverage, download it, watch, then remove it. You install all kinds of special software all the time. I don’t see complaints about needing iTunes or quiktime.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:02:15 +0000

I was able to watch all games for any sport at
nbcolympics.com for the first time EVER. The editing
could have been better (break up 5-hour long videos
into smaller chunks with metadata). Kudos to NBC for
putting all of this online and providing free video streams.

They also had live coverage online for many events.
So, for a sports fan it was great.

Not only that, they had
experts commentary in a chat window beneath the
video for live events — with the expert answering questions
from online viewers.

The TV coverage sucked in comparison. The author of this
article probably didnt spend much time watching the games online